European Digital Decade I Prague European Summit 2021

Digital environment and innovations have been driving the digital ecosystem towards competition on a worldwide marketplace with a signature winner-takes-it-all effect. Nowadays, technological supremacy is shaping both the political and economic power of large businesses. Such market power and interconnectedness reveal vulnerabilities of digital business with gatekeeping corporates and platforms having vast influence on the digital market development, data collection and use, or the rise and fall of start-up companies. To build a sovereign and sustainable digital market, not only the business model and digital infrastructure needs proper navigation, the human capital and cooperation must also be at the forefront. To foster the European ambitions, the European Digital Strategy aims to create a fair, innovative and entrepreneurship-centered environment with limited market power of the gatekeepers, as well as democratic control of the digital ecosystem and its cybersecurity. The European Digital Decade adds the focus on citizens' digital skills and the digitalisation of the public sector. Yet, how can the EU support small businesses and start-ups that mainly rely on platforms or software of gatekeepers that already set the stage? What can be done to engage local citizens in the digitalisation and to support small-scale businesses not to eventually sell their product to the big players?

Marcel Kolaja, Vice-President of the European Parliament (online)

Petr Očko, Deputy Minister for New Technologies, Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic

Marta Makowska, Senior Research Fellow in the European Union Programme, The Polish Institute of International Affairs

Moderator: Nikita Poljakov, Editor in Chief, E15